CFP: [General] Academic Autobiography in the 20th Century

full name / name of organization:

Rocio G. Davis

contact email:

acadautobiography@yahoo.com

Proposals are sought for an Interdisciplinary Conference entitled â€œAcademicAutobiography, Intellectual History, and Cultural Memory in the 20thCenturyâ€ to be held at the University of Navarra (Pamplona, Spain) on the26-28 of March, 2009. This conference aims to engage the current paradigmsof the debate on autobiographical writing by academics (historians,literary critics, anthropologists, and sociologists, among others) andanalyze these in the interdisciplinary context of the consciousness of theways intellectual history and cultural memory may be developed,articulated, and promoted in the twentieth century. Autobiographies byacademics who have played important public roles and whose scholarship haveshaped the ways we think about disciplines, society, culture, orpoliticsâ€”such as Nancy K. Miller, Eric Hobsbawm, Clifford Geertz, LeilaAhmed, Edward Said, Jill Ker Conway, Ihab Hassan, Shirley Geok-Lin Lim,Yi-Fu Tuan, among othersâ€”may be explored as new approaches to thediscourses of intellectual history and culture in our age. We inviteproposals that offer new ways to read these autobiographies and analyzetheir discursive possibilities in the historical, cultural, and academiccontexts in which they were written.

Specific topics may include, but are not limited to: the academic asauthor/historian; academic life writing as history or cultural discourse;academic autobiography as intellectual history; life writing and thedefinitions of academic disciplines; the intersection between private andpublic lives in academic autobiographies; academic autobiography as aliterary or historical genre; the ways in which the notion of literary orhistorical discourse may be rethought in the context of this form ofwriting; the ways academic autobiographies challenge our notions ofhistoriography or literary analysis.

500-word abstracts and a 1-page CV must be submitted (email submissionspreferred) before October 15, 2008 to the Conference Organizers at thisaddress: